@xray: ok, thanks. You might try deleting those .so libs in libs/linux_shared/ which cause problems. Unfortunatly i failed so far in getting a binary c++ application running on all linux distributions. Do you know if googleearth does run on your gentoo system? Just asking, because i'm using similar tricks like them.

@Midnight: Well, thanks for the info. Could please also tell me the system you are using? Like XP, Vista, etc? I guess it's not the shaders, as this game does not use them. Also no Ogre - pure irrlicht ;-)

Without the lib it is working better, but know Im falling back to the desktop when the app wants to play the music_menu.ogg. Thats because I didnt installed a sound driver yet. Is there an option where I can disable the sound ? Sorry but I didnt tried googleearth...

We're still discussing if we can change something about the controls. But we're currently unsure what is actually causing the trouble people have with the controls. We suppose it's one of those two problems:

a) It's difficult to find out how early players need to brake before curves and therefore players drop off the track because they brake too late.
b) It's not obvious in which direction the hover will drift. Players are missing the feeling for that.

Do you think it's one of those (and which one?) or do you think it's something completly different?

@Midnight: I'm really sorry it does crash on your computer. It could maybe help me if you could send me the logfile.txt in case one was created. If none was created that info could also help me. There are definitly no shaders, i'm really sure of that ;-). The resolution is by default set to the desktop resolution. You could change that outside the game by changing the following in media/config.xml: Set use_screen_res="0" and set res_x and res_y to the new resolution. Unfortunatly i won't be able to fix the crash until i can reproduce it in some way. So i'll keep the beta online in the hope i find another computer on which it crashes as that could help me to get additional information. Finding such crashes is the main reason for putting beta versions online :-)

We could probably not fix every problem, but we tried to fix all those which were reproducable for us in any way. So our big hope is that this might be the final beta.

The list of changes since 1.5:
+ Sound can now be disabled completly by setting disable_sound="1" in media/config.xml
+ default keys for steering with keyboard are now: 'a' 's' 'down' and 'right'
+ VSync can now be changed in graphic options
+ Improved logging output when setting -logfile=0 or -logfile=1 as command line parameter
+ XRrandr support in linux (faster and maybe less problems on some computers)
+ Monitor frequency can be overwritten by setting freq="0" in media/config.xml to another value
+ Several speed improvements (like VBO's)
+ New try to fix linux-shared-lib crazyness for freealut
+ Somewhat less memory used now
+ No more background rendering running in main menues
+ Camera now a lot smoother on low FPS
+ Camera starts no longer at wrong position in first frame
+ Camera behaves now correctly on start if first-person-view is selected
+ Several UI-fixes and improvements
+ Highscoredisplay fixed
+ Manual updated
+ Cleaned up file folders
+ dds support added (but not used as it had not enough advantages)

Hm, basicly no feedback from last version, so we hope everything is fine :-)

Still we found some minor problems and decided to make another beta for it (1.7).

+ fixed some z-Buffer fighting
+ No more irritating AL_INVALID_VALUE messages
+ some more UI fixes
+ resizable when not fullsceen now also in linux disabled
+ Missing intro on some windows98 systems fixed
+ Lot of stuff for the full version of the game :-)

My only complaint I have is that the keyboard controls are awkward. The Left/right buttons would be better suited for a throttle E.G. The player shouldn't have to hold the right arrow down, instead pressing right will increase speed, pressing left decreases it, and not touching either arrow leaves the speed as-is. Other than that, this game rocks.

One last thing, I noticed that this game uses SDL but the lgpl.txt was nowhere to be found. Nothing big, but you may want to fix that for the next release.

SDL is licensed under the LGPL (unless they maybe bought a closed-source license?), and the LGPL requires that the LGPL text must be included with any distribution of licensed code. This is yet another reason why zlib/libpng > lgpl.

Hm, SDL is part of the application and the license is in the doc folder - which i actually forgot to add in the releases. Thanks for noticing this, i will certainly change it.

I will also offer the sourcecode of the lgpl-libraries on our website (we must do so according to the license). Thought i don't actually know why anyone would be interested in it, as we didn't change a single line in it :-). Well, programming is unfortunatly restricted a lot by all that legal poop this days ... guess we gotta live with it.

As for the keyboard controls, i'm sorry, but we won't find any setting which will be perfect for everyone. We worked a lot on it until it was possible to get the same times in the races with keyboard than with a joypad or a joystick. Part of it was also the latest change, no longer using the normal cursor controls, but setting a two-hand control as default. I don't know - maybe a throttle based control would have advantages, thats hard to tell without playing with 'em a few weeks and comparing the times. So for now we just have to hope you get used to the controls as they are.

As for keyboard controls, I think a useful feature would be if after you create a new profile, you prompted for each of the keys like...
"Please press the key you would like to use for Moving Forward" etc..etc.. That way, it would be easy to use and the person would be forced to create their own keyboard setup.